Digital BBQ Tongs With Thermometer

The grill is a beautifully-simple device. Crank up the fire, throw down a slab of meat onto the metal grate and let it heat to an appropriate eating temperature; it's a beautiful thing. The only thing that can possibly make grilling more complicated than it needs to be is a kitchen drawer full of extraneous utensils. In other words, the more you can get done with one utensil, the more you can keep in tact the important concept of pure simplicity a part of your grilling experience. And that means that grilling is easy no matter how many beers you drink while doing it.

The Digital BBQ Tongs deliver a pair of tongs and digital meat thermometer rolled into one. Use the tongs to grab and flip your meat and they'll also measure the temperature so that your meat comes out just right. Read the temperature on the backlit LCD handle display and be sure that well done means well done and not disease-infestedly rare. If that's not enough, the tongs even include an LED flashlight, which probably won't help out much for most of your grilling, but could come in handy if you're at a dark campsite and don't feel like juggling your grill lid, tongs and Surefire.

As nifty as these tongs are, I have some reservations as to how well they could possibly work. Ordinarily, you'd plunge your thermometer into the center of the meat to make sure it's cooked. But you don't really use tongs to probe the center, but grab the edges, which are always done sooner. So what's stopping you from getting perfectly cooked edges and a raw, frozen center?

Oh well, perhaps with some trial and error this will be a valuable device. At the very least, you've got a pair of tongs you can use in the dark--so shut off the lights and get your money's worth.

BBQ thermometers always cause me to overcook my meat, so I won't be throwing away the $40 on these tongs, but if you'd like to give them a shot, they could help keep your grill area a little more simple and streamlined.